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Updated on
April 21, 2011,
N.S.
asks from
Santa Clara, CA
on
April 20, 2011

College Recruitment

Has anyone ever heard of NCSA? It's a college recruiting program for your student. They help get your name out there to schools for your athlete. They send out a profile of you to coaches across the country. The profile contains, video clips, stats, grades and so on. There is so much more details in helping our athlete get his name known and it SOUNDS great, but there is an investment involved as with every thing else. Has anyone been through this program? and was it all that they say it is? I want to mention that we heard of NCSA through the school. They held an informational meeting for parents at my sons school with counselors there.

Featured Answers

S.W.
answers from
Minneapolis
on
April 21, 2011

I would be very careful of paying anyone for a service like this. I would talk with other parents of athletes. In my experience, if a high school athlete is good enough to be recruited by a college, the colleges will find them.

I would be very careful of paying anyone for a service like this. I would talk with other parents of athletes. In my experience, if a high school athlete is good enough to be recruited by a college, the colleges will find them.

It is my understanding that what you are paying for through NCSA is intsructons for you to have to do the work yourself. Like an on line adviser, but you are still going to have to mail, send, contact everyone yourselves.

If I was wiling to pay that amount, I would rather hire someone who has had success to do this work.

I am assuming what you want is an actual College Admissions Coach that specializes in Athletes?..

We have one at our daughters high school. Let me see if she is still working there. Her name is Nancy Nitardy. She is the Campus Wide College Coach and is awesome. She used to do the Athletic Portion full time as her job on her own, but the school hired her to help all of the students on campus.. At no charge to our students! She is awesome.

We did not do this. My son was recruited by appropriate schools and he got his name to the schools he was interested in. There are NCAA rules about when contact can be made with student athletes (July 1 of the summer between junior and senior years) so any service you pay for that is "getting your name out there" isn't going to generate any legal contact between coaches & prospective students. Most college coaches aren't interested in students until their senior year anyway - that's when college coaches know what their needs will be for the following year, and that's when students start accumulating their top stats anyway (spring of junior year for spring sports). You can PM me if you want to talk more. What is your son's sport? My son is a distance runner. Happy to chat.

I have not been through this particular the process but I did google NCSA. There is an investment. With all college incitements be careful. Companies know how much we want our children to succeed and have no problem taking advantage of that. Be well.

If your child is a potential Division I athlete, then you should not have to pay anything to any service whatsoever to get your child out there and viewed by coaches.

The people who are best suited for this job are her high school coaches and her club coaches. They have the networking/connections with the various college coaches. They will be the ones the recruiters will want to talk to when it comes time to determining whether they want to invest in your child.

If your child is a freshman or a sophomore and is a highly talented (i.e. D-I athlete) then scouts have already been to games, both club and high school, and are seeing them. College coaches know which tournaments/events are the ones that will draw the high profile players and they send their GA's, recruiters, etc. to those to take notes and scout for talent. If your child is not playing in tournaments/events that are high profile like this, then they probably are not D-I material -or- they're not playing for a team that is a high enough level to be considered for D-I.

If your child is a junior, they should probably be competing at the state level (for individual or dual sports) or their team should be competing at the state level. Most student athletes who attend a high school whose program is sub-par, yet they are offered a scholarship get it because of their club or private sport affiliation.

If your child is a senior, skip it altogether. By late April, pretty much all of the scholarship monies have been awarded. Walk-on with the hopes of perhaps getting tapped for the sophomore year is the best/only possibility.

So...in short, talk to your child's coach to determine what they do as far as presenting their prospective athletes to college programs. Also, contact the guidance counselor at your child's school to learn more about the NCAA clearinghouse (which will be absolutely necessary if they plan on pursuing athletics at the collegiate level).

Now...if your child is pursuing D-II or NAIA teams, then you may want to consult a service like NCSA or, even easier, set up a college visit with schools your child is interested in visiting and when making the visit ask if you can meet with the coach.

If your child will be participating at the D-III level, skip any sort of recruitment that costs money on your part because NCAA D-III schools are strictly prohibited from offering athletic grant-in-aid (which is athletic 'scholarship') to their athletes.

Maybe things have changed since I was in high school, but... back then if you were any good, coaches would come looking for you. I was good enough to swim for a Division 1 team, and my parents had to practically beat the college coaches off with a stick. I don't think you should pay anybody - if your kid has talent, believe me, you won't have to do much but sit back and watch the acceptance letters roll in.

I don't know anything about college recruiting for athletes, but my daughter is a hs senior this year right next door from you (Sunnyvale -- Homestead HS). Everyone says to be careful about scams, but it seems to me that many of the people who had their HS seniors apply to private schools used private college counselors. The school staff is helpful in doing what is needed to get into UCs and CSUs. My husbands work actually provided this service to us as an employee benefit. If I were you, I'd ask the parents of some seniors who are going on to do sports what they did.